The question posed by Philips' Hue, a series of networked LED lightbulbs, is, does mood lighting deserve to become its own technological subcategory?

PopMech firmly subscribes to the idea that LED bulbs are the future of lighting. The incandescent household bulbs that have been illuminating homes for more than a century are tremendously inefficient—they may as well be electric heaters that just happen to throw light. The compact fluorescent bulbs now becoming the norm are more efficient, sure, but they are a transitional technology that is toxic and awkward to use, and throws a queasy, unappealing light.

LEDs are just at the beginning of their days as a household light source. Although currently way too expensive to replace every bulb in the house, LEDs are popping up in home improvement stores, where they're being snapped up by early adopters who want to experiment with them. That explains the selling point of Philips' Hue system: If you're going to try out a new lighting technology in a limited fashion, it may as well be something really interesting.

And Hue certainly is interesting. Each bulb has five lime-green, four red–orange, and two royal blue LEDs. Philips says that combination allows for the best possible tunable white light and can effectively form any color in the spectrum. Hue bulbs also contain wireless Zigbee transceivers, which allow them to connect to a bridge that plugs into your home network. Once they're linked, the bulbs can operate like conventional switched lighting, but they can also be turned on and off through a Hue smartphone app. That app also allows you to create color themes by using either a color chart or an imported photo—just drag the icon for each bulb over parts of the image, and the real bulb attempts to match the color.

Attempts at some colors are more successful than others. The bulbs produce a broad spectrum of white and off-white light, and they also do well in the red and violet range, but colors such as green, yellow, and orange tend feel like approximations. That said, changing the color of the bulbs really does change the character of a room in a hurry.

Hue can perform other tricks as well. Since the bulb plays with the Web-based If This Then That (ITTT) protocol, users can program the lights to change color, turn on, or blink in response to events such as weather changes, emails, calendar events, and any number of other ITTT-configurable situations. Why would you want to program your lights to respond to informational events? Honestly, we have no idea, but it's kind of fun to experiment with.

Truth be told, we're not sure where to place the Hue system on the spectrum from "essential technology of the future" to "ephemeral novelty." On one hand, it reveals the LED lightbulb for what it really is: an electronic device that can be programmed and networked. And that gives us a hint at just how versatile household lighting of the future can be. On the other hand, it's telling that we can't quite figure out what we want from this electronic lighting beyond basic illumination. Adding color to a room is nice, but most of the time we just want to brighten the place up or do some reading, and ordinary lightbulbs are pretty good at that.

Then there's the price. The Hue starter kit, which includes three bulbs and a bridge, is $200. Each additional bulb is $60. That's a lot of cheddar to spend on a couple of party bulbs. But given the way LEDs work, it's not inconceivable that in the future, color tuning and programmability simply will be the way lightbulbs work. We won't buy soft white or natural light or colored lights at all—we'll just buy bulbs that change based on our needs. And in the future, hopefully, they won't cost $60 a pop.